Influence of foreign investors on small states captured in new novel

Oct 14, 2017 News

The Education Lecture Theatre of the University of Guyana [UG’s] Turkeyen campus was the venue for the launch last Monday of a novel titled: ‘The Guyana Contract’. The publication by award-winning Guyanese-American

Ms Rosalind Kilkenny-McLymont (left) presents a copy of her novel to UG Librarian, Ms. Gwyneth George.

journalist/author, Rosalind Kilkenny-McLymont, is one that depicts the influence of high-powered foreign executives on small emerging nations like Guyana.
This latest novel by Kilkenny-McLymont, is set in France, the United States and Guyana, and brings together a culturally and ethnically diverse array of characters in an investment deal rife with suspicion, deceit and ruthless greed.
The plot unfolds amid a rapidly changing global marketplace, touching on themes of national pride; the tensions and weaknesses of a nation struggling to chart its own course; corporate politics; dogged entrepreneurship; human and drug trafficking; gender, sexual and cultural biases; inner conflict, self-discovery and romance.
A story of a young woman unfolds. After graduating from college and before pursuing her career, protagonist Drucilla Durane embarks on a European excursion. She begins with little more than street smarts and a Eurail pass, and it all goes smoothly until her arrival in France. After being shown around Marseille by a handsome young man named Theron St. Cyr, she continues to Paris, where she finds herself in a harrowing situation.
Thinking St. Cyr is to blame, she vows never to forget him. Fast-forward several years: Drucilla works for Pilgrim, Boone and Associates, an influential consulting firm that seeks out only the most lucrative contracts in developing nations. As the only black female in the company’s upper echelon, Drucilla considers her race and gender to be both a liability and an asset. Working on a case concerning air transport in Guyana, Drucilla finds herself embroiled in an affair of dirty dealings that, without prior warning, just so happens to involve St. Cyr.
As in her award-winning debut novel, Middle Ground, which is set in Belgium, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Washington, D.C., Kilkenny-McLymont delivers authoritatively on present-day realities, drawing from her extensive world travel, including several years’ residing in Africa, and her decades-long experience as an international trade and business reporter, entrepreneurship development expert, and fitness instructor.
In describing her work, the author says she strives “to bring the world’s small, colored nations into the global decision making on their economic and industrial development, casting them as sovereign peers with their more industrialized counterparts.” Guyanese culture, language, folklore, and its sometimes painful political history are woven into the main plot of The Guyana Contract, she noted. The plot is in fact not an unfamiliar scenario in the real-life scramble for vital natural resources and lucrative investment opportunities.
An alumna of The Bishops’ High School who emigrated to the United States with her parents and siblings as a teenager, Kilkenny-McLymont also is the author of the non-fiction title, Africa Strictly Business: The Steady March to Prosperity, a collection of her published columns and features on Africa. She will present copies of all of her books to the University of Guyana Library (Turkeyen and Tain campuses), National Library, and the Guyana National Archives.
UG’s launch of The Guyana Contract took place under the patronage of Vice-Chancellor Professor Ivelaw Lloyd Griffith. It featured interviews of the author and the reading of an excerpt from the book, followed by a reception where Kilkenny-McLymont signed copies of the book.
Copies of the book can be purchased at Austin’s Book Store in Georgetown.

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